[krokodil]

New owner here. We use the car for small errands (shopping) and occasional longer trips (under 100miles) on weekends. No commute. Our typical annual mileage is 6-8K. According to PG&E calculator[1], it seems that it cheaper for us NOT to order EV plan. Anbody has the similar experience? Perhaps I am missing something here?

PG&E PEV calculator: (URL omitted, as the forum does not allow me to post it but you can google it) I am using "Chevy Spark", 10 miles per day, and 95070 ZIP.

 

[GlenandhisBolt1!]

Do you have solar panels? Have you considered getting them?

 

[discodanman45]

New owner here. We use the car for small errands (shopping) and occasional longer trips (under 100miles) on weekends. No commute. Our typical annual mileage is 6-8K. According to PG&E calculator[1], it seems that it cheaper for us NOT to order EV plan. Anbody has the similar experience? Perhaps I am missing something here?

PG&E PEV calculator: (URL omitted, as the forum does not allow me to post it but you can google it) I am using "Chevy Spark", 10 miles per day, and 95070 ZIP.

The PG&E EV rate plan is the best plan you can get IMO for anyone with an EV. You just need to change your habits of using energy whenever you want. If you can avoid using much energy during peak hours, you will always come out ahead. The EV-A plan is also non-tiered, so if you drive a lot one month you won't be jumping up tiers. During the weekends I cool my house down to 68 degrees during the 110 degree days and then turn off the AC from 3 to 7 PM. If you can avoid the $0.48 per kWh during peak times, you will pay less than all the other rate plans.

BTW, solar power and the EV-A plan is a match made in heaven. You don't even need a system to match your energy use to come out ahead. Feed the grid at $0.48 per kWh and use the energy at $0.12 per kWh at night. A 5 kW system with the EV-A plan and under 10,000 miles EV driving and a smaller house is all you need.

 

[krokodil]

Do you have solar panels? Have you considered getting them?

Yes, eventually.

 

[krokodil]

Thanks for your detailed comment. You suggest I can save money with EV-1 plan assuming I can change my energy using habits to better take advantage of off-peak rates.
However, if I could not do much there, just adding EV, it still looks like the standard tiered plan is cheaper for low-mileage use. Plus I have a convenience to charge my car anytime, not waiting for off-peak hours.

 

[discodanman45]

Thanks for your detailed comment. You suggest I can save money with EV-1 plan assuming I can change my energy using habits to better take advantage of off-peak rates.
However, if I could not do much there, just adding EV, it still looks like the standard tiered plan is cheaper for low-mileage use. Plus I have a convenience to charge my car anytime, not waiting for off-peak hours.

You can program the Bolt to charge anytime you want. However, if you are going to use level 1 charging you may have to leave your car plugged in all the time. I would check to see what your use is per month and add 250 kWh to it. If the majority of those kWh are at the T3 level, you should really explore the EV-A rate.

 

[RSC]

New owner here. We use the car for small errands (shopping) and occasional longer trips (under 100miles) on weekends. No commute. Our typical annual mileage is 6-8K. According to PG&E calculator[1], it seems that it cheaper for us NOT to order EV plan. Anbody has the similar experience? Perhaps I am missing something here?

PG&E PEV calculator: (URL omitted, as the forum does not allow me to post it but you can google it) I am using "Chevy Spark", 10 miles per day, and 95070 ZIP.

Annual mileage of 6-8K is 16 to 22 miles per day. Did you try the higher mileage?

For my case, using 15 miles per day, ZIP 95370, 200 kWh summer, 300 kWh winter I also come up with E-1 being cheaper than EV-A. (I was on E-1 until recently, but changed to E-TOU-A because it's cheaper for me according to PG&E projections.)

However, I had solar panels installed last week. I was told by a friend that I should get EV-A. I'm considering it, but don't know enough to make a decision right now. Those peak rates seem pretty high and the only off-peak usage I can think of is charging the car and running a space heater in the bedroom during the winter.

 

[DaV8or]

Thanks for your detailed comment. You suggest I can save money with EV-1 plan assuming I can change my energy using habits to better take advantage of off-peak rates.
However, if I could not do much there, just adding EV, it still looks like the standard tiered plan is cheaper for low-mileage use. Plus I have a convenience to charge my car anytime, not waiting for off-peak hours.

I looked at all their plans and came away that the standard tiered plan was best for me. I live in an area where the AC runs a lot because it's hot a lot and I'm home a lot. I don't really like hyper-miling my car, so I'm not really into hyper-miling my house either. If you're not home much and live on the coast, then maybe the EV plan would be a good fit. The up side is, like someone else pointed out, you can charge whenever you want and it makes little difference.

 

[GregBrew]

I looked at all their plans and came away that the standard tiered plan was best for me. I live in an area where the AC runs a lot because it's hot a lot and I'm home a lot. I don't really like hyper-miling my car, so I'm not really into hyper-miling my house either. If you're not home much and live on the coast, then maybe the EV plan would be a good fit. The up side is, like someone else pointed out, you can charge whenever you want and it makes little difference.

Yup. We have solar PV as well, and stayed on the residential Tiered rates. TOU didn't do anything for us, because we don't drive enough miles in a month to make the small saving of Super Off Peak charging offset the massively more expensive On Peak. We're retired, and are home during the day quite a bit.

 

[stanwagon]

Greg Brew: Coloradan here, with a 6 kW PV system and a Time of Use plan. The savings for us has been huge, not just due to the off-peak Bolt charging, but more due to the fact that we get a very high rate for solar elec. produced between 2 and 6 pm, and also a good rate for elec. produced between 9 am and 2 pm. So I am curious that you said: "TOU didn't do anything for us". Does PGE not pay you a lot for what you generate in the peak period? It seems to me that any solar PV owner would benefit from a Time of Use plan. To be more precise, the off-peak rate is 7.6 cents a kWh, meaning a 1.5 cent/mile cost for driving the Bolt.

 

[Fr0stByte]

BTW, solar power and the EV-A plan is a match made in heaven. You don't even need a system to match your energy use to come out ahead. Feed the grid at $0.48 per kWh and use the energy at $0.12 per kWh at night. A 5 kW system with the EV-A plan and under 10,000 miles EV driving and a smaller house is all you need.

This is basically what we do. We have a 5.565 solar array. We are supposed to have a Tesla PV installed, but waiting on battery backlog.

We basically dont worry about when we charge. We are on the PG&E EV rate plane. Summers are great when we produce a ton.

That was also the main reason we decided to buy the Bolt. For the same price, we could have had a nice entry level luxo sedan like an Audi or BMW, but we opted for this. We already have 3 other ICE cars.

 

[CWB126]

Guys and Gals,

This may come as a shock but PG&E want you to consume power at peak rate times so they can charge you up the yin yang.

You will want to set your power up for EV charging and charge your car between 11PM and 7AM.

You can set the control panel in the car to charge at those times as well by the way.

PG&E won't tell you that either or how to do it.

I also put 34KVa worth of solar panels on my house's roof and now I get a check from PG&E every year. They will also try everything in their power to not allow you to put that sort of power on your roof citing all sorts of irrelevant code that may take you more than a year to sort out with your local city and county.

Fortunately for me my home is new and my power panel was upgraded to 400 Amp due to my home data center add on WHILE IT WAS BEING BUILT so I got lucky.

If you do not get on the plan and charge your car outside of this window you will very quickly become aware of the exorbitant overcharging going on by PG&E.

My car now costs me nothing to charge because of solar on the roof and charging at City of Bentwood and other supermarket free charging systems I am aware of all over the Bay area.

However, when I do charge off peak they sure do go to town on it, even with the solar I have.

It all balances out over a year though, but you do have to be careful.

You absolutely should go on this EV power plan.

It also means your dishwasher and clothes dryer should only run at these off peak times, but trust me, we save a bundle on this every month.

There is no getting away from the standard PG&E monthly service charge of $10 a month, but that's trivial when you get the solar panels on your roof.

I lease my solar system and it comes in at $195 a month.

My PG&E power bill was almost $600 a month before the solar panels, so I am still $400 a month better off than I was.

Next up a massive Tesla Battery farm and and new power system with a wind turbine to help the solar store the energy in the batteries which will be roof tile like.

I aim to be free of PG&E power dependency by 2020 but will probably keep it for backup purposes should my rig fail for any reason.

We are also adding a new Tesla 3 series to the fleet and also believe our cost to charge that will also be near zero.

 

[RSC]

I believe that PG&E now requires a TOU plan of some sort or another (not the E-1 tiered plan) for new PV systems. I'm guessing that Greg Brew is on Southern California Edison.

For E-TOU-A on M-F, the peak period is 3pm to 8pm, soon changing to 4pm to 9pm. I don't think that this will work out as well as it could for my system, since my panels face somewhat southeast and I don't get as much production in the afternoon. I don't know yet what will happen in the summer.

For EV-A on M-F, the peak period is 2pm to 9pm, so it covers a little more solar production. The peak rates are quite high, 48 cents per kWh summer and 34 cents per kWh winter. The off-peak rate is cheap, 13 cents per kWh, but M-F this is only from 11pm to 7am. There are also partial peak rates and the hours change on weekends and holidays.

I still haven't decided what to do about my rate plan. I'll be talking to my installer later this week and I'll bring this up with him.

P.S.: CWB126, I didn't read your post until after I had already submitted mine. Interesting observations. It is really amazing how much energy the clothes dryer takes, but I don't think that I could get away with using it between 11pm and 7am. My bills were pretty low, averaging $46 a month before getting the car, but I still wanted solar.

 

[GregBrew]

Greg Brew: Coloradan here, with a 6 kW PV system and a Time of Use plan. The savings for us has been huge, not just due to the off-peak Bolt charging, but more due to the fact that we get a very high rate for solar elec. produced between 2 and 6 pm, and also a good rate for elec. produced between 9 am and 2 pm. So I am curious that you said: "TOU didn't do anything for us". Does PGE not pay you a lot for what you generate in the peak period? It seems to me that any solar PV owner would benefit from a Time of Use plan. To be more precise, the off-peak rate is 7.6 cents a kWh, meaning a 1.5 cent/mile cost for driving the Bolt.

I'm with SCE, and they only credit by the kWh. They no longer credit with $, like in the old days (2000's), so you can't make bank by pushing electrons at high dollars and pulling at low dollars.

 

[GregBrew]

Guys and Gals,

This may come as a shock but PG&E want you to consume power at peak rate times so they can charge you up the yin yang.

You will want to set your power up for EV charging and charge your car between 11PM and 7AM.

You can set the control panel in the car to charge at those times as well by the way.

PG&E won't tell you that either or how to do it.

I also put 34KVa worth of solar panels on my house's roof and now I get a check from PG&E every year. They will also try everything in their power to not allow you to put that sort of power on your roof citing all sorts of irrelevant code that may take you more than a year to sort out with your local city and county.

Fortunately for me my home is new and my power panel was upgraded to 400 Amp due to my home data center add on WHILE IT WAS BEING BUILT so I got lucky.

If you do not get on the plan and charge your car outside of this window you will very quickly become aware of the exorbitant overcharging going on by PG&E.

My car now costs me nothing to charge because of solar on the roof and charging at City of Bentwood and other supermarket free charging systems I am aware of all over the Bay area.

However, when I do charge off peak they sure do go to town on it, even with the solar I have.

It all balances out over a year though, but you do have to be careful.

You absolutely should go on this EV power plan.

It also means your dishwasher and clothes dryer should only run at these off peak times, but trust me, we save a bundle on this every month.

There is no getting away from the standard PG&E monthly service charge of $10 a month, but that's trivial when you get the solar panels on your roof.

I lease my solar system and it comes in at $195 a month.

My PG&E power bill was almost $600 a month before the solar panels, so I am still $400 a month better off than I was.

Next up a massive Tesla Battery farm and and new power system with a wind turbine to help the solar store the energy in the batteries which will be roof tile like.

I aim to be free of PG&E power dependency by 2020 but will probably keep it for backup purposes should my rig fail for any reason.

We are also adding a new Tesla 3 series to the fleet and also believe our cost to charge that will also be near zero.

Everyone needs to be aware that a few years ago, most utilities changed what they pay for excess generation at "True-Up" once a year. They now pay at wholesale rates at the time of True-Up. SCE pays ~$.03/kWh for excess.

Over the life of my 5kW system, my cost for power from it is ~.10/kWh, so buying a system that's larger than my projected needs in a money-loser for the incremental investment.

Ideally, your production should yield a 100% offset.:nerd:

 

[discodanman45]

Everyone needs to be aware that a few years ago, most utilities changed what they pay for excess generation at "True-Up" once a year. They now pay at wholesale rates at the time of True-Up. SCE pays ~$.03/kWh for excess.

Over the life of my 5kW system, my cost for power from it is ~.10/kWh, so buying a system that's larger than my projected needs in a money-loser for the incremental investment.

Ideally, your production should yield a 100% offset.:nerd:

Actually with the EV-A plan with PG&E I would shoot for a 80% offset. So far in 7 months I have used 1840 kWh over my solar production. I still have $160 in credits even though I have used almost 2000 kWh in net usage. I will pay about $300 a year to be hooked up to the grid and pay the $0.02 charge for each kWh used from the grid. The best $22,000 after the tax credit I have ever spent!

 

[discodanman45]

I still haven't decided what to do about my rate plan. I'll be talking to my installer later this week and I'll bring this up with him.

I had to give a lesson to all the installers that gave me quotes on the EV plan for PG&E. I doubt your installer could give you any decent advice. Here is the big reason to get the PG&E EV-A plan. The EV-A plan has no tiers on energy use. The no tiers on the EV plan is an amazing reason to sign up for it if you have an electric car. Even if someone can only afford a 3 kW system, they could save a lot of money with the EV-A plan. You could charge your car at night for $0.12 per kWh as much as you want. No tiers is very important for people using solar to power their house AND car.

 

[NY-Rob]

....Ideally, your production should yield a 100% offset.:nerd:

Yup, with the pittance you get paid for over production you'll never break even on the cost of the panels, micro inverters, etc.. needed to overproduce. The closer to matching production with consumption at "settle up" time the better off you are.

 

[GreyBolt]

I planned for about +3 MWh to play with, but if that sounds like a lot, for those of you on gas heat, 1 MWh is only equivalent to about 34 therms.

Originally, I was considering a hybrid heat pump hot water heater, but went gas tankless instead. So I ran a few dedicated 20A circuits (#12 Romex) and use a variety of types of Delonghi heaters to eat the surplus (which is easy considering I can use 150 therms for even my small home during a cold month).

I do not commute, but I expect to eat a bit more of my reserve with the BOLT now too (PHEV before, but only more now for the few long trips).

Upstate, NY (National Grid) we just get 1:1 credits, and no carry over at the March settlement month. This March will be my third time. I think last year, I hit within 12 kWh of my even point (12 kWh free to NG). The unknown variable is what day and time they record the meter reading.

 

[hatchy]

Anbody has the similar experience? Perhaps I am missing something here?

Right. To the OP.. you may not be missing anything. Its been a while since I did the math but I ended up with TOU as being best for me, not EV. I charge 11-7 off peak only when at my house. Actually I thought it was 10pm but I could be wrong.